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Wilkinson College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences

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The Shiwilu (Jebero) Language

﻿Until recently, the Shiwilu language was very little known to
scholars. The only professional linguist who had investigated the language was
John T. Bendor-Samuel, who completed a dissertation on the Shiwilu verb in 1958
(see, Bibliography of Kawapanan Linguistics). For almost five decades there was
practically no attempt to document or describe the language. Moreover, until
the beginning of the present century, linguists were not even sure if any
fluent speakers remained. There was no dictionary, grammar, text collection, or
even a more or less agreed upon orthography.

Since the
implementation of the Kawapanan Project (NSF #0853285), the situation described above has significantly changed.
We have access to a few studies focusing on different aspects of Shiwilu as
well as a comparative work on the Kawapanan family (please, see list below).
Also, the Project has produced a trilingual Shiwilu-English-Spanish dictionary
containing over 6,400 entries, accompanied by plenty of illustrative sentences
and some grammar information, a collection of narratives in Shiwilu and Spanish
(in Valenzuela, 2012), and some pedagogical materials that include a practical
guide to write the language. In addition to this, a large number of audio/video
recordings that represent the speech of almost all the speakers of the language
have been deposited in the Archive of the Indigenous Languages of Latin America
(AILLA).

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Shiwilu Grammar: "Typological Characterization"

Typological Characterization of Shiwilu

This section provides an overview of the typological profile of Shiwilu and is divided in three parts: morphological typology, constituent order typology, and other typologically-salient features. The features grouped in the third category are: consonant phonemes that are unusual cross-linguistically or unusual for the Western Amazon region, four person system, distinction between intransitive and transitive verbs, applicative affixes, instrumental/manner prefixes, classifier system, and promotional passive construction.

Morphological Typology

Morphologically, Shiwilu can be characterized as a synthetic, inflecting, polysynthetic, incorporating language. Words tend to be complex, consisting of content root morphemes with one or more affixes (synthetic). It uses prefixes and suffixes. It is an “inflecting” language, in the sense that adjacent morphemes tend to cause phonological changes in one another through processes such as palatalization: mutu’la‘penis’ + =sha DIM -> muchu'llasha‘little penis’; luwan-tu‘want’ + -i’nnegative + -lek non future, first person singular subject > luwanchi’nek‘I do not want.’

The morphological structure of verbs may be highly complex. In addition to subject and object, verbs mayexhibitinstrumental prefixes, noun/classifier incorporation, directional suffixes, and applicative affixes, among modifications.

6.Napi’ku’lusa’ler ekpa’llina’ menminennak. napi’-ku’=lusa’=ler ek-pa’-llina’ menmi-nenna’=k long.ago-now.dead=PL=TR.SUBJ ASSOC-go-nFUT.3PL field-POSS.3PL=LOC The elders used to take him to their fields. Los antiguos lo llevaban a sus chacras.

11. Nu’su’ lantekpi dekkuntuwiñi napi’. nu’-a’su’ lantekpi dekkun-tu-win-lli napi’ do.so-NMLZ.3SG basket path-VAL-FRUSTR-nFUT.3SG long.ago And that is how the basket used to walk a long time ago Así el canasto caminaba antiguamente.

16. Ipa’lalek, ipa’lawalek yunsi’ñi. ipa’la=lek ipa’la=walek yunsu’-i’n-lli now=up.to now-up.to come.out/leave-NEG-nFUT.3SG To this day, to this moment he will not get up. Hasta hoy, hasta ahora no se levanta.